All the King's Horses
by ForLoveofFiction
Summary: Wyatt Logan is used to missions going FUBAR but when fate, and time machines, turn his life upside down it may not be so simple to try and piece it all back together. Lucy Preston is no stranger to loss but when supposedly dead wives resurrect it's a tad more difficult to swallow. And Flynn, he's playing his cards close to his chest, as always. Lyatt. Garcy.


**1**

Memory is a funny thing. Things we would rather forget we remember. Things we would rather remember we forget. And even those things that we manage to remember that we want to engrave in our minds don't play out in exactly the same way that they were when it happened. Just ask two people to recount an event and chances are they won't be entirely alike. We're human after all, not walking videotaping machines.

But when we throw a time machine into the equation, memory and history are up for debate. They become quick sand. Nothing can be trusted, everything could change in an instant and we may not even know that it has.

Worst of all is when you, and only you, remember something that nobody else can. Worst of all is when you step out of that machine into a world where things that once mattered to you are gone and the only ones who will ever understand your pain are the two other people on that lifeboat with you. When remembering becomes a mission and preserving the scraps of it that you carry with you is not only your duty but also the only way you can live anymore.

Then what if all those missions messing around with time and memory decide to bring back something that you've longed for in what seems like forever right when you've decided that, you know what, it's okay to move on.

Yeah, life's a bitch that way.

* * *

Wyatt presses the heels of his palms against the back of his eyes. The skin is cool on his eyelids but the burning sensation behind them is stronger. This can't be right. He does not want to believe that it is. Because if it is, it's a sick mother fucking joke. Except of course the weight of the cellphone in his hands is real. The text message he's read for what seems like the hundredth time since he got into this cab is real.

He's done everything he could to bring her back before, even stealing the time machine, accidentally killing a man, and ultimately getting arrested for it. And yet, by some weird fluke, something or the other they'd done that was completely unrelated suddenly miraculously resurrects her from the dead. Her. Jessica. His wife. The one he'd gone and buried six years ago. The one that has haunted him in his dreams ever since.

The words on the screen are simple. _We need to talk. Drop by the bar will you. For once. Jess._ It's phrased like a request but he knows better. Or was it known better? He's received many such instructions in the army. _Point. Shoot. Kill._ Rinse and repeat.

Wyatt lets his pent up breath out in a long whoosh as the familiar green and black facade looms up on his right. He'd spent many a night in the past in front of the two story building staring through its glass store front, some cheap beer bottle in his hand, trying to find that particular shade of blond hair he'd know anywhere amidst the crowd. He'd spent even more drinking himself into oblivion inside when he realized that it wasn't Jessica tending bar behind the polished wooden counter or handing some young couple who'd just walked in a menu.

He tells the driver to pull up a couple of buildings ahead even though the curbside in front of the bar is empty of the usual pileup of cars. It's silly really. He shouldn't have any problems seeing a ghost from his past come to life. He's a soldier for crying out loud. Delta Force and all that. He's faced down insurgents and raining missiles. And with his gig working with the Time Team he's seen far more kooky things since he'd first stepped foot into the past. Yet the prospect of seeing Jessica after all these years unnerves him. He doesn't know whether he wants it to be real or not. He's been praying for it so long and been denied for so long that the idea that just a few feet away the woman he'd fallen in love with and married all those years ago is walking and talking is nothing short of a seismic upheaval.

He hands the cabbie a hundred. It's been a long drive here and an even longer run from where the bunker had been to any place that even had a hint of civilization. Wyatt gets out and for a long minute he just stands there staring several buildings ahead at the green sign board hanging in front of the building. The bold white lettering says Gilroy's. He flexes his fingers, angles himself forward but his feet are seemingly glued to the concrete. What if it really isn't Jessica? What if this was some evil ploy by Rittenhouse to lure him away from the bunker, leave Lucy and Rufus to fend for themselves without anyone to back them up? Or at least not anyone whom they hadn't spent the last couple of months chasing through time and getting shot at by. He still has his doubts that busting Flynn out from a maximum security prison was a good idea.

And then of course there is Lucy herself. Dear stubborn amazing feisty Lucy. The woman he's vowed to protect with his life. The woman who, in the six long weeks she'd been missing and everyone else had presumed dead, he'd slowly but surely realized he'd fallen in love with, though he'd have sooner died than admitted it when Rufus had first remarked on it in the midst of that deserted road in World War I. She was the woman he'd just that very night before made passionate love to. And the woman who, he knows, he is betraying by standing here, the heat of the afternoon sun beating on his neck, as he contemplates what he would do if the woman inside the joint a few paces down really is his formerly dead wife.

Wyatt dries his suddenly sweaty palms against his jeans. _Buck up man. This should be nothing compared to fighting in Afghanistan._ He clenches his fists and shoves his indecision into the growing pit at the bottom of his stomach. It takes only twenty strides for him to cross the rest of the buildings and in through the wooden front door.

At first he doesn't see her. The place is filled with the lunch hour crowd. It takes a minute before he notices her standing at the far corner of the long row of booze beside the terminal. When he does it is, just like he had imagined before, her hair that he spots first. She's wearing a checkered blouse. Her hair is slightly shorter than he remembers. Her figure just a little bit thinner. Even with just her back visible from where he stands he recognizes her. It's her, no doubt about it. Not the pale faced Jessica he'd laid down in a black casket. Not the black and white version that stared up at him from countless missing person ads he'd taken in the papers before that. The images of her he's replayed in his mind over and over all those years as the rest of the world forgot she existed are nothing compared to the real deal.

And for a moment he forgets to breathe. Everything shifts. He can hardly recognize his own voice when he calls out her name. He's scared the moment will shatter. He's scared this reality will all come crashing down.

When she turns towards him and he sees the way she's kept the top buttons of her blouse open to show the v of her neck clearly just like every other time he's seen her before, Wyatt can't help but believe. It's part reverence, part relief that makes him blurt out his thoughts. "Oh my god. You're actually here." There are so many other things he wants to say but the words get strangled in his throat. _You're real. Not like every other dream I've had where you haven't been._

Wyatt's barely conscious that he's moving, his feet propelling him forward. He pulls her close, his hands wrapping around her like he's always dreamt of. He doesn't grip her as tightly as he'd wish, a part of him still afraid that if he did this moment would evaporate and he'd be left with less than nothing. He ignores the very physical ache he feels having her skin against his, from the overpowering scent of strawberry and vanilla that he's breathing in. All that matters is that she's alive. All that matters is that she's here.

He repeats himself. He's never been that eloquent but now there's nothing else he can say. His words are at once his salvation and his penance. "You're actually here."

It's only when he steps back and properly looks at her that he realizes that something is really amiss. She does not look the least bit happy to see him. Granted, he wasn't exactly expecting the same level of enthusiasm. He's the only one who has lived through her funeral after all. Still, there's a decided chill in the air.

When she doesn't acknowledge his questions and simply gets right back into the business of managing the bar he's shaken. When she tells him he's been AWOL for the last 2 months he's taken aback. He's desperately trying to wrap his head around the news she's flinging at him as though he should know all of this and more. The high he felt seeing her is sinking into a muddled heap. Sure he's not the Wyatt she's known but there has to be some mistake. How could he have simply dropped her without a word for 8 weeks? He loved this woman. Correction. _Loves_ this woman.

"I came here as soon as I got your text."

He's stating facts but even to his ears it sounds like he's rationalizing, as though the fact that him running over the moment he saw those words blip onto his screen, leaving behind the other people he cares about without a word or a look back, somehow made up for the actions of that other Wyatt, the one that this Jessica knows.

When she asks him where he's staying it takes him a few seconds to process it. She doesn't say "meet you back at the house." It implies he's not living with her. In a way it's true. He's been living in that decrepit hole for a while now. She doesn't know he's been living in a secret government bunker that looks like it might have been a relic of the Vietnam war. But still, he never expected that she'd be saying anything else other than "home". "I'll send you the address." It's all he can say. He doesn't protest when she tells him that she'll meet up after her work is over. He just looks at her one last time before he steps out into the bright sunlight and heads to the nearest motel.

* * *

The motel room is a nice change compared to the cramped quarters and the wire and mattress contraption he's been sleeping in over the last several weeks. There's a TV in here for once. Been equally long since he's turned on the telly. The bunker is woefully short on creature comforts but he supposes it's probably for the best. Who wants to turn on the TV to find out on Good Morning America just how much they screwed up reality? Reading about it in Wikipedia is bad enough. He certainly has no inclination to do so now even with all of cable TV at his literal finger tips.

Wyatt knows he really should be calling the guys back. He knows Lucy is probably worried. She would have that crinkle on her forehead he's seen hundreds of times before as she chews the bottom of her lip. If he were honest he should tell her it's actually adorable never mind that with all they regularly go through it is completely inappropriate. He tugs his phone from inside the pocket of his black jacket. He places it on top of the rather small white round dining table in the corner beside the window. His right hand hovers over it, its edges slightly banged up since it was issued after they'd been shuttled into that war relic of a safe house. Untraceable. Unhackable. Or at least that's what the government says on the tin. Lately he trusts that far less than he ought to, supposed patriotic decorated soldier that he is.

He's been putting off this conversation for a while now. At first he told himself that he needed to first know that Jessica is in fact really alive. Now that he knows that she is he's been putting it off because he doesn't really know what to say. Does "hi, just letting you know my supposedly dead wife just turned up so I had to fly the coop" go down well in any reality when your current lover is on the other end of the line?

He paces the room, having nothing else to do, his feet wearing down a path in the already threadbare carpet in a small neat triangle from the table to the door to the edge of the small bed. On his tenth pass the phone rings. He rushes to it. When he sees Lucy's name on the caller ID he doesn't know whether he is relieved it isn't Jessica or disappointed that it isn't her.

This time he swipes to accept it. "Lucy," he breathes. He's thankful his voice doesn't crack when he says her name.

Her voice is higher than normal. She's pissed at him. She has every right to be. "Where have you been? I've been calling you for hours. I'm worried sick. What is going on?"

"Lucy..." It's hard to get a word in edgewise but he's got no choice. He really has no choice with what he has to say next. He's known it from the beginning that he could never keep the truth from her. No matter how much the army had trained him on how to keep secrets he never could when it came to her. Even if it means he'll be breaking her heart.

"Lucy...Jessica is alive."

The silence that descends isn't entirely unexpected. He forges ahead. Better to get it all out before the inevitable happens. He sits down at the edge of the bed because he knows this conversation won't be easy. "Somehow we changed history and she's alive again." This isn't the best way to say it, he knows. He'd rather this conversation happens face to face where he can hold her hand. Or even if he can't, because how can he after all this, at least he can see for himself what her reaction is.

"That's..." Her voice wavers. "I don't...how is that possible?"

Wyatt cradles the phone against his ear. The words come slightly easier now, now that the hardest of them all has been said. "I don't know. She texted me. I step off the lifeboat and I get a text from my dead wife."

"I don't understand. Did we change something that brought her back?"

"I don't know but she's real Lucy. Her hair is a little different. It's shorter. But her eyes are the same." Wyatt sucks a breath in. _Yes, exactly the same. Not as he saw them last but the same as when he'd still been happily married to her._ "Last time I saw those eyes...she was dead." He can still clearly recall how they'd looked when he'd been asked to ID her body at the morgue. They'd been closed. A courtesy, the attendant had said. Closed and never to open again.

He rushes through the rest of it, because he owes her an explanation, if nothing else, and if he doesn't say it now he might not have the nerve to later. "Apparently she's lived through six years that I don't know anything about and I guess I wasn't a good husband or something and..."

"Well, you now have time to change all that. Don't you?"

"Yeah." She seems to be taking it well but he knows her better, knows how she puts on a brave front even though she's hurting inside. He knows this must be tearing her up inside after all his guilt and longing are ripping him apart in places he never knew he had within him. "Lucy..."

"I'm so sorry." He says it from the bottom of his heart. He really is. It isn't fair to her what he's done, what he is now. When he'd taken her into his arms in Hedy Lamarr's spare bedroom he'd still been single. When he'd kissed her good morning the day after he'd sincerely thought that they'd have all the time in the world together. But now, finding himself no longer a widower but a supposedly still married man, changes everything, almost like the moments they'd stolen in 1941 had turned into some affair when it had never been his intention.

Her voice is soft, really as though she is miles away. "Wyatt I'm thrilled for you."

"Yeah but you and me..." He doesn't say what he really means to. _I love you._ He can't say it anymore, doesn't have the right to. He doesn't know if he deserves her absolution, her continued support.

Her voice is steady, only the slightest hitch at the ends of it. "She's your wife. And you love her. I mean this is everything that you've wanted, everything that you've been hoping for. This is...this is a good thing."

Wyatt nods. Yes. It is a good thing. He desperately wants to believe that. After all, this is what he'd been trying so hard to bring about before, right?

"And now that Jessica is back..." Lucy's voice trails off, never finishing the sentence but he knows what she's saying, what they both know is going to happen now. He's going to go back to Jessica. He has to. He's always been the kind of guy who believes in the "together forever" of marriage. And Lucy knows it. If he doesn't try to make his marriage work now that he's gotten Jessica back it wouldn't be him.

Wyatt takes a deep although shaky breath, clears his throat. Checking up on him isn't the only reason she would have called. Easier to talk about work, about Rittenhouse, about the mission. "Yeah, um, why did you call? Is everything okay? Did the mother ship jump?"

Her answer is fast, almost too fast. "No. Everything's fine here. Just focus on figuring things out with Jessica. Take whatever time you need, okay?"

He can only repeat himself even if he knows that right now it's probably the last thing she wants to hear. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be."

He hears the half-strangled sob right before she cuts the line and he puts the phone down. It's not what he wanted, it really isn't. He sighs. He'd told her once that he didn't believe in fate. Well, if fate was real it had a really bad sense of humor because as much as he loves Jessica he's also in love with Lucy. And now ain't that a bitch.

* * *

Totally gotten hooked with the series. It deserves every supporting view and props for its talented cast, great story line, and the fact that it's just really fun and entertaining.


End file.
